My Dyna is my commuter for the most part, I rarely do much weekend riding due to many projects and chores. We went for a long weekend of camping and left last Thursday after work, the Dyna had done well all week. It sat untouched Friday, Saturday, Sunday. When I started it up Monday morning I heard a new sound, a buzzing type of noise. After some moving around the bike I noticed the sound is emanating from behind the timing cover. Oil is full. Any idea why I'm hearing a new sound from there?

One friend thinks it could be the cam belt tensioner...

 

cam chain tensioners is what it sounds like to me.

I would not run the bike AT ALL until you figure it out.

 

well that sucks, he sent me this video-

 

I agree.

 

I'm dreading pulling all of that **** out of my 88 to eventually replace with the "07-up hydraulic tensioners. You can pull the cam cover to inspect the outer tensioner. I wonder if it can be assumed that the inside is worn to the same level as the outside. It is indeed an insanely idiotic design.

 

How many miles on this bike? Are you the original owner? Are you running synthetic oil?

 

You don't have to remove the cams (from the cam plate) and outer bearings to replace the secondary tensioner if you use this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qoAIPecew7k&feature=youtu.be

 

I am the fourth owner, I run conventional 20/50, bike is approaching 38k miles, I dropped it off at HD yesterday afternoon......

 

nice,, that tool is the bees knees lol And from what I understand the inner ones tend to wear faster than the outer...

 

The trick to making your tensioners last is to polish the back of the Hy-Vo chains (the side that rubs on the tensioners) take them to a metal polisher. Then replace your tensioner pads with Cyco ones and they will last 2-3 times as long.


Chains (depending on how far into the stamping tool's life they were made) can be really rough or really smooth and so tensioner pad wear varies considerably.


The ones in my Lowrider are good ones and at 35,000 miles there is no measurable wear on the front tensioner and not much more on the rear.....it is worth spending some time on the alterations above as it's dead cheap and very effective.